Floodgates
by Lasrevinu
Summary: Sara is under a car.  What’s going through her head?  GSR  Chapter Three
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Disclaim this!

Spoilers: _Living Doll_, for one. Then lots of little things along the way. I refer to tiny parts of old episodes, so if you're not familiar, you might want to pass.

Rating: M for mature subject matter and I'm NOT talking about sexy stuff. I'm serious.

Summary: Sara is under a car. What's going through her head? GSR

A/N: This was even too angsty for my beta, so…beware. Much thanks to her for looking it over, anyway. This isn't really my style of writing, but I've gotten maybe six hours of sleep in three days. Lack of sleep changes the personality. A whole week sleeplessness and who knows? Maybe I'll start 'shipping the GCR.

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Floodgates

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Part I

Nevada dirt wasn't really dirt at all, not that soft kind you could plant flowers in, or make mud pies with. No, the dirt that covered the greater Las Vegas area aspired to be rocks -- tiny, microscopic boulders that were currently digging in to Sara's chin as the rain loosened up the top-most level and washed it her way. Her teeth chattered as she raised her neck ever-so-slightly, not bothering to focus on the generic stretch of desert that lay before her. She had given up trying to figure out where she was. Knowing her exact location wasn't going to help her.

Nothing was.

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling scant tears escape to mix with the rain on her face. Sara grit her teeth and whispered, "So we meet again."

XXX

__

Forehead, bellybutton, right shoulder, left…no, no. Left shoulder, then right shoulder. That's it. Okay…God? You there? Testing, 1, 2, 3. Oh, what am I doing? Okay…I'm Sara Sidle. But you know that. If you exist. Although I shouldn't exactly insult you when I'm going to be asking you for a favor, so let's just say you do exist. Okay. God? You know the deal here. She just got out of the hospital and this last time…I didn't think she'd make it. I really didn't. Now, I don't ask you for much. I haven't asked you for anything, in fact. But I need this one thing. I need you to make it stop. You have to make it stop. You have to. The next time…he's going to kill her. I know it. He can't kill her. You can't let him kill her. I'll be good. I swear, I'll be good. I just…I really need this favor.

Thanks.

Um…Amen? Am I supposed to say that at the end? Or God bless you? Wait, why would I say that? Never mind. Just…do me this favor, alright? Thanks.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

There was blood, but it was his. It stopped, but it also ended.

Sara Sidle learned an important lesson the day her father died: just because God answered her prayers didn't mean He was on her side.

At age twelve, she faced a whole new set of problems, and, at age twelve, decided she would deal with them Godless, God-free, without the help of any deity whatsoever.

Unaccompanied by God, Sara went on her first date at age seventeen. She liked it and went out again with the same guy. She should've been suspicious when he insisted she drink from the flask he kept in the glove compartment of his ratty Jeep Wrangler, but Sara was too innocent and too much in awe to realize he was slipping her a roofie. Her first clear memory of that night was waking up in the front seat of his car, alone. He had parked in front of a frat house. Sara numbly read the Greek letters above the doorframe as the soreness between her legs registered. Blood. There was some blood. She blinked, shaking her head before her eyes caught the sheen of something near her feet, illuminated by the lights of the frat house.

A condom.

Sara blindly reached for the door handle, falling out of the 4x4 and onto the firm New England soil on her hands and knees. Her stomach lurched forward and bile mixed with bourbon streamed out of her throat, splattering as it hit the sparse grass. The music from the frat party pounded in her ears. Her eyes began to water. She spit the last of the vomit out and sat up, slightly out of breath. Figures moved in the lit windows in front of her. Leaning her head back against the slate blue Jeep, Sara looked up at the starless sky.

__

I don't need you.

She got up, dusted herself off, and walked the mile and a half back to her dorm. _I don't need anyone. I'm fine._

And as if she needed to prove it, on her way to the showers, Sara asked out one of the boys she knew had been admiring her in her economics class. The next day, after recitation, she did her best impression of sultry as she gamely suggested they skip the planned movie. Only the day before she was a virgin, and now she was deflowering an engineering major under the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" poster that hung by his bed.

She did it again the following week with a different boy.

The next eighteen months saw Sara Sidle morph into a creature that was altogether not Sara Sidle. Oh, this new creature maintained her GPA, grade-grubbed, and did every extra-credit project she could get her hands on, but her extracurricular interests tended toward the more…unwholesome. Though barely a hundred pounds, this new Sara could drink the boys under the table. And she did.

The alcohol made it easy to be, well…easy. Every new notch on her belt put one more man in between her and the first. Though her finals were upon her, Sara refused to slow down. After a late night of drinking before her Abnormal Psych exam, she showed up for the test nauseated and on the verge of collapsing. Though not a stranger to the aftereffects of overindulging, her tolerance had built up quickly. She managed to concentrate enough to get through the final with out collapsing.

__

You're staying in tonight, Sara, she told herself as she scurried back to her dorm so she could fall into bed and sleep until she felt better.

Fourteen hours of sleep and she should've been well-rested for her Philosophy final.

Well-rested people don't puke on their exams.

Sara stared at the mess in front of her. She hadn't had a drink in over twenty four hours. She watched numbly as a janitor was summoned to clean up her mess.

Her professor approached her. "Miss Sidle, would you like to take a make up exam later on in the…"

Another wave of nausea hit and this time she made it to the wastepaper basket.

"…uh…never mind."

She was in a mess so big, janitorial couldn't clean it up.

XXX

The clinic was small and not the futuristic lab-like setting she imagined. There were flowered curtains framing the frosted window in her exam room. Flowered curtains, for fuck's sake. How was she expected to have an abortion in a room with curtains exactly like the ones in her grandmother's kitchen?

The nurse held her hand the entire time. It would've been a comfort -- the first maternal type of contact she had had in years -- but the gleam of the lamplight bounced off the woman's thin gold cross, making the pendant on her chest glow as if the tiny figure of Jesus had hung his head and wept over Sara's failures, her sins. She could feel God there, judging her.

She squeezed her eyes shut. _I don't need you. I don't need you. I don't need anyone._

The doctor, seeing that she had come alone, pat her knee afterwards and smiled sympathetically. "The world has plans for you, Sara."

Plans.

Plans.

She made her plans. Sara began her senior year sober and focused entirely on her studies. Anything and everything personal, she blocked out. She just wasn't good at that sort of thing. It only led to heartache. Nothing would ever take her by surprise again because she was just simply not going to put herself in those kinds of situations. She graduated magna cum laude and left for San Francisco with no thought beyond the fact that success was ahead of her. It was hers for the taking.

No personal entanglements would get in her way.

None.

She was Sara Sidle, Super CSI. She was the workaholic, invincible, dogged criminalist who never --

"He's supposed to be really boring."

"I'm bringing my headphones."

"He's so dull."

Oh, no. Not dull. Subtle. Not boring. Intense.

And gorgeous. Did she forget gorgeous? Gorgeous.

One look at Dr. Gil Grissom and Sara could feel it all unravel. He was her undoing. She knew it on some level, but welcomed it anyway. Welcomed him. She wanted. And wanted something that wasn't an achievement, that wasn't a status symbol that stroked her ego like the Ivy League degree did, or the new promotion at the lab. She wanted in a way that had nothing to do with where she'd been or where she was going.

XXX

Fourteen years.

It didn't seem like fourteen years, looking back on it. During, definitely. But it's funny what happens when you get what you want: all the pain and heartache becomes an afterthought. What was it he once said? The heart has no memory for poison? Sure, it was case-related and he meant an actual beating heart and actual poison, but it worked as a metaphor, too.

She suffered at times during those fourteen years, but it was a different kind of suffering than she had been used to -- it was the bittersweet suffering of waiting for love. The wait had proved fruitful, leaving the bitter behind. They tasted only the sweet. For two years, it was mostly sweet. Two practically uniformly sweet years.

Sara was sure Grissom assumed he knew the worst of her past, and she let him go right on thinking that. He was an amazingly steady boyfriend, all things considered. There were one or two moments when she felt uneasiness on his part, but any and all feelings of panic she had had little to do with his actions.

No, what seized Sara with fear beyond reason was him realizing there was more to her story than a dead dad and a knife-wielding mom.

XXX

The rain continued to beat down around her, splashing up off the hard ground and wetting her cheeks.

"I…I don't need you," Sara said aloud, her teeth chattering from the dankness.

"I don't need you," she repeated. "But I need him. I _need _him. We need to make a deal…"

Her neck was stiff and sore from holding it up slightly, so she rested her cheek on the ground and cried. _…I'll tell him everything. Just get me out of here so I can see him again. He can leave me if he wants. I just…I need to see him. I need to hold him one more time._

Please.

"Please," she eked out, fearful her next breath would be her last.

Lights flashed. Sirens blared.

Prayers answered.

TO BE CONTINUED…


	2. Chapter 2

Part II

He lost his taste for God and tuna casseroles all in the same weekend. Earthenware dish upon earthenware dish of it -- tuna casserole, not God -- was stacked up in the freezer, enough so that his mother would not have to cook dinner for the next few months.

He watched the freezer slowly empty of casseroles as if it were a countdown to the moment she'd stop mourning, to the moment she would stop crying over the 8x10 picture of his father that traveled with her from room to room, smudging the glass with lipstick and tears.

She still made him go to church, although it became an exercise in ritual for him, not spirituality. While she found comfort in the words the priest spoke, in the promises of an eternal heaven where she could once again be with the man she loved, he found comfort in her comfort. The kneeling, the cross, the Lord's prayer…like someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, doing them over and over gave a young Gil a sense of calm. The messages behind the acts -- the ones that were so important to his mother -- were not lost on the smart boy, but they were of no use to him, either. His father was dead, and he knew his mother sometimes wished she was, too. Would a just God -- would a loving God -- put them through such unhappiness? Gil had two answers for this: God was not just, or God was not real.

Either answer seemed to suit him, for he knew that they both led to the same conclusion: he was on his own. The abject horror he encountered as the L.A. County coroner and then Las Vegas criminalist only served to hammer home his stance.

The little rituals derived from religion helped him cope, helped him find bits of beauty in the world, but fundamentally, his opinions were not changed.

God and tuna casserole: not for Gil Grissom.

Was it a bad sign that the first meal she ever cooked for him was tuna casserole?

He had been fucking her for about a month. Their first encounter happened the night they rescued Nick from his grave. Everyone had eventually left the lab -- either to visit Nick in the hospital or to go home and get some much-needed sleep -- and he and Sara were left to catalogue the recorded tape of Nick's ordeal, the cassette of that awful song by The Turtles, and the Styrofoam cup. Armed with a file, she stood in his doorway. He immediately tried to hide the glass of Scotch he had been drinking. She saw it, but pretended not to as she placed the file on his desk. "Do you need a ride?"

"No."

"So you wanna…recreate what happened last year? Only this time, I pick you up from the police station? Failing a sobriety test sucks, let me tell you."

"I'm bigger than you," he croaked, his voice hoarse from lack of sleep. "I metabolize alcohol quicker."

"And when was the last time you ate?"

He didn't feel like arguing. Grissom stood up slowly so he wouldn't lose his balance, grabbed his jacket -- covered in mud and dust -- and followed her to her car. Sara didn't say a word as she drove to his townhouse. When they were two blocks away, he blinked at the street signs, vaguely surprised she had remembered not only where he lived but how to get there.

She pulled up in front of his driveway.

"Thanks," he mumbled, tripping out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

"Do you need help?" she asked.

He turned to face her, shaking his head. And then he vomited onto the passenger seat.

Grissom winced and then looked up to see Sara unbuckling and exiting the car. Her gentle hands were on his shoulders as she proceeded to help him to his front door. He stood there, trying to focus on the nickel-plated numbers of his address. _1...2...4_.

"Keys?"

"Wuh?"

"Your keys?"

"Oh, um…" He fumbled in his pocket and found the key ring. "It's the biggest one that's not a car key."

She speedily unlocked his door and ushered him inside. "Will you be alright?"

He watched her place the keys in a little ceramic bowl by the entrance. How did she know that's what he used that bowl for? Grissom stared at the keys in the bowl, entranced. The bowl. The keys. Sara.

"Grissom?"

"Hmm?" He looked at her.

"I said, 'Will you be alright?'"

She tucked her hair behind her ear, her brows furrowed with concern. Why did she have to look so damn young? A kid. She was just a kid. So pretty, though. So pretty.

He reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady himself while he used the other hand to un-tuck her hair from behind her ear. "I like it better like this," he said, his voice rough. She watched him, eyes wide. With both hands firmly anchored on her shoulders, he pulled her to him, clumsily meeting his lips with hers. Somewhere, in the dim recesses of his mind, he knew his breath was foul, but he couldn't stop. One of his hands moved to take hold of the back of her neck as he swept his tongue passed her lips and into her mouth. She tasted sweet. She tasted fresh. She tasted…like life.

The moment Sara began kissing him back, he began moving in the direction of his bedroom, stepping on her toes only once or twice before the backs of her knees hit the edge of his bed. Grissom's hands flew to her waistband and peeled the jeans from her hips until they sagged past her knees. He freed himself from his own pants and fell on top of her onto the mattress, uncomfortably adjusting himself until he rested in the cradle of her thighs. His lips locked onto hers and he slammed into her in one hard stroke, tearing the breath from her lungs as she wheezed against his mouth. He stilled himself, closing his eyes shut while he buried his face in the crook of her neck. He was inside of her, and all the nervous energy he felt -- all the frustration and anger -- seemed to deplete as he lay there, seeping in her warmth. When her breathing evened out, he secured his hands under her butt and flipped them over. Grissom sat up slightly and reached down to her knees, sliding her jeans down to her ankles, pushing off her shoes and socks quickly to free up her limbs so she could move.

She didn't.

Sara just sat there on top of him, joined with him, and stared.

He nodded his head and took hold of her hips, urging her to move. Once she began rocking on him, he rested his head back on his pillow and watched. It wasn't that he didn't want to participate, it was that he really couldn't. Like a voyeur, he kept his eyes glued to her face and body as she worked herself into a frenzy. The tone of her voice seemed to change the closer she got to climaxing. It wasn't the smoky sound he was used to. The pitch seemed higher, her whimpers light and airy.

For the next two years, it was always the change in her voice that pushed him past the point of no return. Once he heard that high, delicate moan, he was a goner.

When she collapsed beside him that first time, naked from the waist down, he could feel the tension slowly build up in him once more.

"Are you on The Pill?"

It took a few seconds for her to answer. "No. But I'm finished my period two days ago. It shouldn't be a problem."

Sara turned so she could sit up and reach for her jeans. Grissom noticed that she didn't bother with underwear as she pulled them back on. She moved to the foot of the bed so she could put on her shoes.

"Sara…"

"We can blame it on the alcohol," she said quickly, not bothering to look back at him. "Or the stress. Or whatever. It won't happen again."

With that, she left.

Exhausted, he rolled out of bed to clean himself off and brush his teeth. Grissom had just broke rule numero uno. More than work, more than bugs and science, he thrived on order.

And he had just invited entropy into his bed.

Sara equals chaos.

It was an equation, perhaps not mathematical, that made absolute sense to him. She tripped him up, she made him tongue-tied. She wiped his well-stocked brain clean of all thought.

Oh, but it felt so good to be part of that chaos, to be part of her, if even for a short time.

In chaos, he found his calm. In Sara, he found his peace.

So instead of falling into bed like his body was begging him to do, he changed out of his sticky pants and drove to her apartment.

She opened her door after the third knock. He wasn't sure if she would, but she let him in.

"I wanted to kiss you again…but I needed to brush my teeth first."

Looking back, it was a feeble apology, but she accepted it and him.

And, slowly, Sara seemed to get used to the idea that he wanted to be there. So much so that she made dinner -- not takeout -- on their first mutual night off together.

Tuna casserole.

He ate it for her and smiled, all the while wondering if she had any idea what kind of sacrifice he was making, if she had any idea he was breaking another one of his rules. For her.

XXX

He sat in his SUV, a copy of her ID picture nestled in his grip as he stared down at his mother's rosaries splayed over the fabric of his pants. It had been over forty years since he prayed, but he had not forgotten how: 

Our father, who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Please.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is Heaven.

Save Sara.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

Take me instead.

As we forgive us that trespass against us.

Please.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

I promise I'll be good.

For thine is the kingdom,

I give up…

and the power,

…it's yours…

and the glory,

…just give me her…

for ever and ever.

…for ever and ever.

Amen.

TO BE CONTINUED…

A/N: My beta read this and said, "He kissed her with pukey breath! That's so you." It is me. You know what I want to see in the premiere? Pit stains. I want to see Grissom have pit stains as he searches for Sara in the desert.


	3. Chapter 3

Part III

_The Big Chill_ was a lame movie, but Grissom seemed to like it. 

"Did you ever go a day without a rationalization?"

He had asked her that three years earlier and she had initially brushed off the question. It wasn't until hours later, after he left, that she began to ponder the question he posed.

Sara rationalized a lot.

But of course she would. Someone with her past…the murdered abuser for a father, the abused murderer for a mother…she had every right to…

Yeah, that was her problem. She rationalized.

A rationalization, a rationalization, her kingdom for a rationalization. Ah, good old Shakespeare. Grissom would appreciate that.

Now was the winter of her discontent. Or the fall, really. Now was the autumn of her discontent.

A chill seemed to settle in Las Vegas. The weatherman with a wall of shiny white teeth made a big deal about the unprecedented drop in temperature as fall swept through Nevada. "We've never seen lows so low," he smiled, his fake orange tan and stripe of white teeth making him look like some sort of mutant clownfish.

Global warming, some said. Others attributed the permanent gray sky to the goings on in the gulf -- cold fronts or warm fronts or something. Either way, none of it was true. Sara knew exactly why the sun did not shine in city she called home.

She had yet to tell Grissom about her past.

To tell him after she was rescued would be cheating (she rationalized); he was in too delicate a state (she rationalized) and wouldn't be able to withstand the blow (she rationalized) or, worse, his guilt for the entire situation would color his judgment (she rationalized) and he'd accept her checkered past (she hoped).

So she waited.

And the longer she waited, the more she wished she hadn't.

Not too long after she arrived home from the hospital, Sara stumbled on a once-sealed cardboard box in the middle of Grissom's home office. She didn't recognize the box. It had probably once been white but was now a faded cream color, clean but old. The shiny packing tape had been sliced through, leaving the top flaps pointing up at angles, making the large cube look like a mini house. Without thinking, Sara bent down and pushed back a flap and caught a glimpse of Grissom's face under glass.

She furrowed her brow, frowning at the sepia-toned picture. Grissom, but not Grissom.

His father.

Sara swallowed as she lifted the frame from its bubble wrap bed. She traced the features of the elder Grissom's face gently with her fingers. He had a kind face, not as handsome as Gil's, but more openly gregarious. He looked like a man who would like her, no questions asked. He looked like a man who would welcome her into the fold, who would give her a great big bear hug and not care about her tainted years.

This was the man whose DNA lived inside the man she loved, whose death shaped the boy who would become the man she loved.

They had the same lips.

Sara's index finger circled his mouth. She had kissed those lips thousands of times, had searched them endlessly for a shade of a smile or a frown.

"What are you doing?"

His voice was tender, but she jumped anyway.

"I…um…I saw this box and I…"

Grissom squatted down next to her and smiled sadly at the picture in her hands. "You found my mother's box. Her favorite things."

Sara handed the picture to him, feeling unworthy of holding it all of a sudden. "Your father?"

He nodded.

She was dying to say something to lighten up the mood ("Now I know where you get your good looks from, baby. Your dad was a hottie!") but decided it would only relieve her own uneasiness. Not everyone felt they needed to hide their family behind flippant comments. Instead, she was honest. "He looks like he was a nice man."

Grissom's gaze shot to hers, his eyes so glassy with tears, she had to look at her hands. "He was."

He handed her back the frame so he reach into the box. She watched him peel back the bubble wrap and uncover the rest of his mother's treasures.

"Her photo album," he said quietly. "All of the pictures were taken before Dad died." The old leather binding squeaked as he turned the cover to the first page. "Their wedding."

Sara took in the sight of the new Mr. and Mrs. Grissom, beaming at the camera as they stood outside of what she presumed was a church. "They look so happy," she said encouragingly, hoping he'd talk more.

"They were. This was taken December 14th, 1955." She nodded, tilting her head and taking in the image. "I was born almost exactly nine months later."

"Someone had a fun honeymoon," she murmured, wincing after the words had left her mouth. He laughed, though, surprising her, and she leaned her head lightly against his shoulder. He turned the page and this time it was her turn to laugh: an infant Gilbert Grissom was sprawled out on a blue receiving blanket, his naked round ass there for all the world to see. "I want a copy of that for my locker at work," she joked.

"Very funny," he said, good-naturedly, turning the page again, revealing more family pictures. Thanks to his mother's carefully preserved album, Sara was able to see Grissom's first Christmas, his first day of school.

"You were absolutely adorable," she said as they came upon a snapshot of a seven-year-old Gil, all decked out for Easter in his Sunday best.

He just smiled, shaking his head and turning the page. "Dad's greenhouse," he sighed, staring at a shot of his father surrounded by rows and rows of plants. "Mom loved roses, so he had this rotating collection of rose bushes in the back corner of the greenhouse. She always had fresh blooms." He turned the page, reaching the end of the album: a picture of Grissom's father in an armchair, with his son seated on the floor by his feet. "Dad's last picture. He died two weeks later."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Looking at this now…I can see I was happy. They were happy. They had ten full happy years together. Ten years. That's worth something."

Not knowing how to respond, Sara just wrapped the arm that wasn't cradling the picture around Grissom's shoulders. After a long moment of silence, he cleared his throat. "There's more stuff in here." He reached into the box once more and pulled out some carefully folded handkerchiefs. "She monogrammed them for him." He reached into the cardboard box again and pulled out a carved wooden box. "Her jewelry."

Grissom's fingers wandered over the design before he lifted the top of the jewelry box. He examined the contents. "Sara, I…I want you to have something."

Her eyes widened as she looked from Grissom to the wooden box and back to Grissom again. "Hmm?"

He carefully extracted a gold chain and pendent. "Her cross. She wore it all the time," he explained, dangling the piece of jewelry in front of her. "She took off her rings to wash the dishes and garden, but she never took off her cross. Will you have it?" he asked. "Will you wear it?"

Somehow, Sara found her voice. "Of course."

Grissom gathered her hair to the side before unclasping the chain. He laid the cross at the base of her throat solemnly, taking a moment to kiss the back of her neck before securing the clasp once more.

"I know I've never said…in so many words…I've never been able to say…even though I feel it." He breathed deeply, and she turned to face him. "I love you, Sara."

TBC…

A/N: I know the period of human gestation is 40 weeks (which is not nine months) but nine months sounded so much nicer so I went with it.


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